Test Data

1. My PDS school is East Park Elementary, while looking at the test score data in reading I noticed that the students scores were 21.77% mastery, 7.55% above mastery, 3.55% are at a distinguished level in reading.
2. After looking at the scores I noticed that nearly 40% of the students stuggle with reading comprehension.

3. The instructional intervention that I might use is Think Alouds.

4. In the article "Comprehension of Exposity Text: Insights Gained from Think-Aloud Data" the study found that "...children who produced accurate paraphrases were more likely to perform better on measures of comprehension than children who produced inaccurate paraphrases. While working memory performance was not directly related to the number of comprehension questions answered correctly or to recall performance, it was moderately associated (r ≥ .30) with paraphrase accuracy. Thus, there was a trend for higher verbal working memory scores to be associated with higher paraphrase accuracy and comprehension performance."
The article " Perspective Effects on Expositorys Text Comprehension: Evidentce from Think-Aloud Protocols, Eyetracking, and Recall" The results showed that in addition to increasing the fixation time and recall for relevant in comparison to irrelevant text information, a reading perspective guides readers to use slightly different comprehension processes for relevant text information, as shown by think-aloud protocols.

5. Does using teacher think alouds improve reader comprehension?

6. informal assessment- group questions/answer
formative-story structure questions

Action Research

1. What is the title of the project? What happens to third graders' writing when they participate in a reading and letter writing program?

 

2. What is the problem? Third grade writers struggle with language development, such as letter formation, spacing of words, use of punctuation and capitalization [Berrill p. 5]. Each year teachers use published curricula or design their own to address the skill third graders use and need. The problem found in my third grade writers is that they struggled with all components of letter writing; dialogue, organization, sentence structure, flow, text-connections, vocabulary, mechanics, support from the reading, and making references about themselves.

 

3. Describe the instructional intervention. pen pal letter-writing program

 

4. What kind of strategy is the instructional intervention? simulation and games

 

5. What evidence is presented that the strategy will work? In a pen pal letter-writing program, certain structures and wise use of class time are necessary to ensure the timely and continuous exchange of letters and the ongoing support for the relationship between the writers (Berrill p.5). In addition, being part of a pen pal letterwriting program brings enthusiasm among “even by the struggling readers/writers” (Berrill p. 6). Berrill continues, this “demonstrates just how powerful a pen pal relationship can be in helping children learn to … write” (p 2).

6. How will data be collected to determine if the strategy will work? The tools used to provide information are the occurrences of errors, the Introductory cycle-letter and the Cycle 1, Cycle 2, and Cycle 3 letters, a scoring rubric: that I adaptaded from the In2Books materials specifically designed for this pen pal letter writing research [Appendix B], and a rubric guide [Appendix C]. The data collected over a period of four [4] months was measured against the In2Books-writing rubric. (Appendix D)

 

7. How was the data analyzed? using a rubric after each letter writting experience and graph to show the results.

 

8. What were the results? I found that after four months of mini lessons, individual conferences, and letter writing that my students in the beginning did not use dialogue. They began to really use it after exposure; reading various dialogues, and writing it. By letter four many of the students were able to write a formatted letter that included salutations and a body. I also learned that many of the students varied with simple and complex sentences, which made the reading flow easily. The main struggles continue to be using vocabulary and the mechanics. The remaining guiding questions in this action research: Are any text-connections spoken of?, Are statements supported from the reading? And Is there a reference made about the student? Were assessed and the on going research showed that five students continue to make fewer errors in their letter writing than in previous months classroom writing.

My struggleing students MI's

After giving a version of a multiple intellegences survey to my struggeling student i found that they were: visual linguistic, naturalist, mathematical/ logical, and interpersonal.

Here is an updated version of my pre-assessment

web quest pre-assessment

anchor video

WEb Quest Pre-assessment

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dElUVTBRbDhyZS1xaWxoeV9yZU5TeEE6MQ#gid=0

Power Standards

Power Standard 3
Science Kindergarten

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Power Standard:	Students will observe and record the changes that occur in the environment, then create and present the information with drawings, weather calendars, and graphs.
Objectives Addressed in the Power Standard:
Objective ID Objectives SC.O.K.1.7 collect and record information in a variety of ways (e.g., drawings, weather calendar, or graphs). SC.O.K.2.10 observe and record daily changes in weather (e.g., clouds or air temperature). SC.O.K.3.2 observe and point out that change occurs gradually, repetitively, or randomly within the environment.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/07/gk2/weathertoday.html  Link to the lesson plan. The struggling student I think would be very engaged in this lesson plan.  Students are asked about their own environment so, therefor it is interesting to them.